1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a method and system for compression, and subsequent decompression, of a video image.
2. Related Art
A two-dimensional image of video data may be transferred from a first location to a second location over a data communication path or network (e.g., telephone lines, cable, etc.). Such video data may be compressed prior to such data transfer, and decompressed following such data transfer, in order to reduce the transmission time for completing such data transfer. The compression is either lossless compression or lossy compression. With lossless compression, the video data after being compressed and decompressed, is bit-by-bit identical to the original image of video data. With lossy compression, the video data after being compressed and decompressed, is not bit-by-bit identical to the original image of video data. With the current state of the art, lossy compression can have a significantly higher compression factor (i.e., number of bits of original image/number of bits of compressed image) than does lossless compression. However with lossy compression, the decompressed image is not identical to the original image and the decompressed image is thus degraded in quality relative to the original image.
Thus, there is a need for a method and computer system for accomplishing lossless compression such that the compression factor is high.